Week 2 -- What should I do now?

What should you do now? Well, if you haven't done so yet, introduce yourself. Usoa and Joan have done so already, but we've still got three members of the blog who haven't.

Once you've introduced yourself, how about you tell us all about one of your successes with young learners? It can be something small (just an idea that worked), or something more far-reaching. It could be something from your classroom in this next week (to some extent we are using the blog to reflect on what actually happens now in our classrooms); but it doesn't have to be from this week.

To give you an example, I have to go back a long way -- to the first young learners class I ever taught. The kids (who must have been about 8 and 9) asked me to tell them a story, and showed me the storybooks they have on their classroom library shelves. They were much too difficult for them to read, but they said I could tell them the story.

I think it was Red Riding Hood, and they loved it -- especially when I made them all jump by suddenly snarling as the wolf.

Regretably, I didn't realise at the time what huge potential story-telling has for young learners and I don't remember ever reading them another one (and mightily bored -- and naughty -- they were, too, for the rest of the year, doing grammar drills).

There's a wonderful book on story-telling for YLs of English (called "Story-telling", published by OUP, by Andrew Wright), if you are interested.